Books.
Volume 7, 1896, pg. 556
The Voice and Spiritual Education, by H. [Hiram] Corson, LL.D. (Macmillan and Co., 1/-). The author of this most suggestive little book says that literary criticism should consist for the most part of quotations: this is an admirable axiom which we hasten to fulfil by quoting a passage, which we beg to commend to everybody who is tempted to trust to literary lectures for a knowledge of literature:--"It is a comparatively easy thing to lecture about literary products, and to deal out literary knowledge of various kinds, and cheap philosophy in regard to the relations of literature to time and place. A professor of literature might do this respectably well without much knowledge of the literature itself. But what students especially need is to be brought into direct relationship with literature in its essential, absolute character; so that the very highest form of literary lecturing is interpretative reading. Such reading brings home to sufficiently susceptible students what cannot be lectured about, namely, the intellectually indefinite element of a literary product. Much of what is otherwise done for students, in the way of lecturing, they could do quite as well for themselves."
What Shall I Tell the Children, by the Rev. G. V. Reichel (H. R. Allenson, 5/-). The idea of this volume is to associate an interesting story and some appropriate object with a Bible lesson. Recent science and history are laid under contribution; some of the stories are very sweet, as that of Correggio's Last Angel. The way in which the objects are used is curious: for instance, we have Lesson IX., The Judge's Story, object, a worn copy of a school geography, Scripture lesson, "With all perseverance," and then follows a brightly written story of a poor boy who made great efforts to buy a geography book, and prospered in the end. The volume should be very useful to Sunday School teachers.
Proofread by LNL, Oct. 2020